After earlier connections to Preston shortly after what appears to have been an unsuccessful first marriage, Dr. Mary Ethel Josephine Thornton, nee Cantwell established a further connection to the north and north-eastern suburbs when in 1937 she married Dr. Wilfred Kent Hughes, a prominent Eltham resident for over a decade before moving to Warrandyte circa 1935 and where she remained for nearly 30 years.
She was first noted in 1929 at a guest function at the Preston City Hall; and around the same time was noted as medical adviser to both the Victorian Women’s Athletic and Women’s Hockey Associations which introduced rules that their players must undergo a medical examination before competing.
The link to Preston became stronger the following year when entries for the Preston Baby Show were to be presented before Dr. Mary Thornton, Bell-street, Preston – the 1930 directory shows her and her husband couple at Angus at 619 Bell-street, the south-eastern corner of Gilbert-road – although it was noted later the same year that she had left Melbourne to take up a position at Hamilton Hospital.
In 1931 she was noted as being appointed a demonstrator in pathology at Melbourne University; later the same year as a guest when the Preston St. Vincent’s Hospital Red Cross Auxiliary held its first social.
By 1934, she was listed as resident medical practitioner, at the Austin Hospital, but then in May, 1936. It was noted “Dr Mary Thornton, who formerly lived at Warrandyte” had returned from 12 months at the Otago District Hospital in New Zealand, and, after a short holiday, she was to return to take up the position of radiologist at the Wanganui Hospital.
She married Dr. Kent Hughes in 1937, although there is a mystery as to whether and exactly when – there is nothing shown in Victorian, New South Wales or New Zealand registrations, nor anything in personal columns in Melbourne newspapers.
Professionally, she continued to used the name Thornton, but several references to social or personal events add “wife of Dr. Kent Hughes”; there are references to the couples’ Warrandyte property as “Yarralyn”.
In February, 1939 while in practice at 22 Collins-street, the address listed for her husband’s medical practice over many years, she was elected a fellow of the British Association of Radiologists for her original work on the radiological aspects of metastases of cancer. Again, she was the first woman in Australia and New Zealand to obtain this distinction.
On the outbreak of the Second World War while she held the positions of assistant honorary radiologist at Austin Hospital and clinical assistant to the radiologist at St. Vincent’s Hospital, she offered her services to the A.I.F. which at the time includes chest X-rays in its medical examinations, but was rebuffed as the Army still refused to utilise women doctors, either locally or on overseas service.
(One article “Breaking the Female GP Glass Ceiling” written by her grandson Phil Thornton suggests she was also rejected by the New Zealand Army, and again by the A.I.F. after she returned to Australia, apparently suffering from radiation sickness).
In February, 1940, it was announced she was about to leave Melbourne for London to join the British Army as a radiologist, with lieutenant’s rank, in the Royal Army Medical Corps …
“Dr. Thornton, who was at school at “Ormiston” and graduated at Melbourne University in 1926, is in private life Mrs Kent Hughes, wife of Dr. W. Kent Hughes, of Collins Street. She has a 13-year-old son, Graham Thornton, who is a boarded pupil of Melbourne Grammar School”. (“Ormiston” is now Camberwell Girl’s School).
The same report suggested she had worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse during the First World War – chiefly as a dish-washer – at the Wirth’s Park Rest Home on the corner of St. Kilda-road and Nolan-street, now the Victorian Art Centre site. (Although termed “nurses”, the V.A.D. women were restricted to domestic tasks such as washing, cleaning, cooking, etc).
On arrival in England in early April, Mary Thornton was posted to an army hospital at Aldershot with the rank of Lieutenant, and promoted to Major when she was later transferred to Palestine.
She arrived home late in September, 1941 – her grandson suggests suffering from “radiation sickness” – and resumed practice in Collins-street while still waiting on a change of heart from the A.I.F.
Dr. Wilfred Kent Hughes died on 8 November, 1941 at their home in Warrandyte, one Death Notice a tribute from employees from Malvern Tramway Depot showing him as late doctor to the Tramways Board, another from members of the Tramways Sub-branch of the R.S.S.A.I.L.A.
Although shown in practising in various locations around Melbourne over the next few years (including acting as visiting specialist in radiation at the new Repatriation General Hospital in Heidelberg), Mary retained the Warrandyte property, which she appears to have mortgaged in around 1950 to establish her practice in Albert-street, East Melbourne (apparently financing her Warrandyte property to finance the project.
Her military archive shows her in 1962 applying via the R.S.S.I.L.A. (on letterhead showing her as principal of the Croydon Radiology Centre) for assistance in re-building her home at Warrandyte after it was burnt-out by bushfires.
He flew to London in June, 1950 to attend the Sixth International Congress of Radiologists (held every 10 years) , also a “study tour” of hospitals on the Continent and expected to meet up with her step-daughter, Dr Ellen Kent Hughes, then engaged on post-graduate work and the latter’s daughter, Miss Judith Wilson, secretary to the Director of the United Nations in Geneva.
In 1951, she became involved in a bitter dispute over an Immigration Department decision to allow German migrants to settle in Australia which saw her announce plans to ran for Federal Parliament in the seat of Higgins held by the-then Immigration Minister, later Prime Minister, Harold Holt. The bitter argument that evolved saw the R.S.L. threaten to expel her, claiming Mrs Kent Hughes had been “unfair and harmful” in her attacks on the league for its endorsement of German migration.
The following year, she became involved in another battle, this time with Queen Victoria Memorial Women’s Hospital, initiating an action in the Arbitration Court after the hospital administration rejected her appointment, instead engaging two males as radiologists.
An Appeal the previous month had upheld the hospital’s decision, but in December, a Stipendiary Magistrate upheld her application and ordered the hospital to employ her in preference on the basis that her experience was significantly greater than one of the male candidates
By this time, she had established a practice in Albert-street, East Melbourne, apparently mortgaging her Warrandyte property to finance the project.
In February of the following year, the hospital appealed the magistrate’s decision in the Full High Court, challenging a part of the Federal Re-Establishment and Employment Act that enabled one serviceman to get preference over another, and also sought an injunction to stop Dr. Thornton from enforcing the Magistrate’s order; it was noted that the hospital had still not employed her.
Along with her busy professional schedule, Mary Thornton also found time to write four books.
“for the thousandth time did I curse the Australian military authorities whose refusal to accept service from a woman doctor had forced me across the world”.
(“Matilda Waltzes the Tommies”, Dr. Mary Kent Hughes, Oxford University Press, 1943)
She also wrote a novel, “Dust of Nineveh”, Heinemann, 1946; a biography of Dr. John Singleton, the founder of the Flying Doctor service, published by OUP in 1950, and a book on her travels in Europe sequel to her original work, “Matilda Waltzes On” published by William Heinemann in 1954. There were also two of her short stories published in The Bulletin – “The Story of Dog Collar Dan”, 4 January,1956; and “Storm”, 18 February, 1959.
Dr Thornton was born Mary Ethel Josephine nee Cantwell at Bullengarook (Hawthorn), the first of four children of Phillip Percy and Alice Maud, nee Howes (the youngest, Frank, in Northcote in 1908). She married to Angus Pollard Thornton in 1925 who she divorced in 1935 on the grounds of desertion, and died in Taree, N.S.W. July 21, 1965 and buried in Newcastle Cemetery.
